Free Three Slices by Chuck Wendig, Kevin Hearne, Delilah S. Dawson Page A

humans like an elegant shark through a school of fish. They unconsciously shift and part as they wait in line for their lunch, turning away as I pass and tugging up their collars, fidgeting with their gloves. Silly creatures.
    Before I’ve reached his window, the cook has already deposited a blood vial on the counter for me and disappeared. My fingers tighten around the still-warm glass tube, and I know who I would choose, who I would kill and drain until he was utterly empty: the vile gobbet of flesh holding court in his corner of the caravan’s dining car. Barnum himself.
    Kill the ringmaster, take the circus. Easy as that.
    Barnum sees me watching him, and his fat finger draws a line across his well-covered throat in warning. I walk a fine line here, as the only Bludman in a company of humans, daimons, and freaks. He needs my magic, but he keeps me on a short chain, and I have a bad habit of slipping my collar. One more mark against me, and he’ll either call the Coppers to drag me off to some dank city’s dungeon or drain me himself and make a pretty penny bottling my forbidden but intoxicating blood. Tit for tat , the old duffer would say, silver coins dancing in his eyes.
    With the slightest bow to my all-too-mortal master, I pocket the blood vial and leave the wagon. I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend all afternoon among the caravan’s human riffraff, discussing weather and the popular cut of trousers with the creatures who should rightfully be my prey. One day, I’ll rule this circus, or something like it, and on that day, things will change.
    Criminy’s Captivating Caravan has rather a ring to it. Much better than Barnum’s Traveling Circus . Not that anyone can tell old Barnum that.
    Back in my closet of a room in one quarter of a proper wagon, I flick the cork from the vial as easily as I could rip Barnum’s head off his neck. The blood is cooler than I prefer, lumpier than blood has any right to be, and carries the taste of the sea, tangy and wild, which means it’s at least two weeks old and was taken as payment when we were camped by the shore. One copper coin or one vial of human blood: That’s the only way to get through the circus turnstiles—unless you’ll work for less than that. Two tubes a day is standard, but Barnum only allows me one so I’ll know my place.
    Hours later, just as the circus starts up for the night, I entertain myself by picking the locks on the dining wagon and pocketing half a dozen vials of blood. I think of Barnum’s pulsing jugular as I drink them one after the other, swirling through the caravan’s shadows in a floor-length cape as I hurry to the stage. The audience is waiting for me, so close that I can smell their excitement and fear. I wipe the red from my lips, lick the dregs from my fangs, toss the vial to the ground, and whirl out from behind the black velvet curtain in a clatter of glitter and calliope pipes.
    Everyone in the crowd wants to be chosen. From the lantern-lit stage, I see a sea of eager faces and waving, gloved hands. It’s rare that a human from the city can interact safely with a tame Bludman like myself, a dapper gentleman in topper and tails with a cultured accent and a smile hiding fangs. I look twenty, but I’m so much more than that. And they have no idea. They live such small lives, have such small thoughts. They think me a monster, manacled in satin and doeskin, and they’re not wrong.
    It’s always a woman that I choose, though. The way they’re trapped inside their homes, herded behind the high walls of cities, and kept far from a proper education and world view—it makes them pliant and suggestible and eager to please. They practically hypnotize themselves.
    She can’t be the loveliest girl in the audience, the one I select. That just makes the plainer girls jealous. But it’s also hard to manufacture chemistry with a homely dullard. What I need is a pretty girl, not too slender and not too plump, not too petite and not